Take Your Heart And Walk Away
by hopelessromantic549
Summary: He never dreamed that in taking away most of her past, he took away most of her, too. But he doesn't regret it, because she's happy. And that's all he ever wanted for her. Damon observes the aftermath of his sacrifice for her. Sometime in the future. D/E.


**A/N: This is pure speculation, and also something that I felt had to be written. Details are purposefully vague – imagine what you like; imagine what brought them to this point. Please assume, though, that Damon and Elena were in love. That's important.**

**Title from song by Parachute. Enjoy and please don't favorite without reviewing!**

_And I'll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep  
And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe  
- Last Kiss by Taylor Swift_

There are times when he wishes he could forget her.

It would be easier, he thinks, easier than reliving the easy catch of her breath as she lingered in his arms, the tender words that passed her lips with no effort at all. It is all so unattainable now, and that is indescribably painful.

But then he remembers the curve of her lips as she told him she loved him, and he's certain any amount of pain is worth that memory.

(Even if the memory is only his to keep).

He checks up on her sometimes, ignoring the tears that pool incessantly in his eyes when he sees her lithe silhouette through the thick glass. She always looks happy, or at least happier than she was when he was a part of her life; her eyes sparkle and she tosses her head in an eerie imitation of that silvery laugh he remembers so well. She twines a silky lock of hair around her finger, babbling delightfully on the phone. Her life is so carefree now, he muses. The thought is more bittersweet than he can bear.

Sometimes, he still can't believe he made her forget it all.

He can never tell whether that hole in her heart has begun to fill, the hole he unmistakably carved, his resolve shaking with love and fear and a myriad of emotions he still can't define. At least, she never seems sad, and he could not be more grateful for that. After all, the only reason he took away those precious memories was because he didn't think she could survive such sorrow.

He's not sure if this life is preferable, but at least she doesn't cry in the middle of the night like she used to. At least hordes of vampires aren't after her. At least, at least, at least…

Her life delves into the smallest of troubles; the cute boy at the bar doesn't call her back, or her boss assigns her a story that leads nowhere. And thus, she is certainly brighter than he remembers, more effervescent now that the supernatural is the stuff of Hollywood for her again. Really, she shines like he knows she was always meant to.

Of course, she seems a little hollow, a little empty (she does not have nearly as many people to love), and surely not the woman who singlehandedly salvaged his humanity. And that hurts him, more than he expected it to. This is a side effect he had not anticipated; in taking away most of her past, he finds he took away most of her, too.

But he realizes how selfish it would be of him to approach her, to see her, to touch her, to try to give her back what she's lost. The magnetism between their souls, their hearts, is much too strong – she would fall for him again, without any of the restrictions of the last time (he soars at the thought). But the danger would not be gone; he is still a vampire, and she is still a human. She would still live in constant fear.

And really, he has ruined her life once before. He does not think he could bear to mar her lovely light once more.

So he watches her grow up, go to college, marry a boy with brown eyes who can make love to her without draining her of the blood he still holds in such high regard. He watches her lounge in the sunshine, tilt her face up to the moon, dance around the yard with snow in her hair. He watches her, and slowly, he fades away.

He cannot deny the irony. She has no idea who he is. He is stuck in their past, remembering the touches and the gazes, while she prances into the future, a future that is all her own, ignorant of everything she's leaving behind.

Ignorant of him.

But he wants her to be happy. He did this for her, because her happiness matters more than anything else, even his sanity. And she couldn't be happy in his world. She lost too much, suffered too much.

He sees her touch her lips sometimes, quiet moments when her eyes trace the outline of her window and distance shadows her precious face. Her brows furrow, confusion lacing every delicate feature, and he knows she is looking for something. Something, of course, that she will never find, and the sight breaks his heart into more pieces than he imagined possible.

Because she is the picture of a war, and that is precisely what he didn't want for her. Her subconscious is fighting to remember the life she never wanted, fighting so hard that it interrupts the smooth trajectory of her borrowed time. She is living a fairytale, and still, she wants to remember.

It is too much for him.

And after a while (several years, years in which she is walking down the aisle and glowing with pregnancy and throwing her dead, dear head back in laughter), he cannot handle it. He wants her to forget him, to forget everything, even the beautiful, catastrophic, doomed love they shared. He _needs_ her to forget him.

Of course, a small part of him yearns to leap through the window and capture her lips with his, if only to feel her against him just _one more time_.

He hates himself for it. He is not good for her. He doesn't deserve her.

And he doesn't mean it the way he did all those years ago, when she belonged to his brother so completely, so inexorably, that to come between them would have been a fool's errand (it comes as no surprise, then, that that is exactly what he did). He doesn't mean it the way he did when he told her he loved her and then compelled her to forget those three little words, words that meant everything to him. He doesn't even mean it the way he meant it when he convinced himself that she could never love him. No, not that way. He knows better than that now, although he is not entirely certain that the searing pain is worth the realization.

When he peers into her cozy little house and sees her dancing around the kitchen, bouncing a baby on her hip (a baby with her soft brown eyes, no less), he realizes that he means his _world_ isn't good for her. He is a vampire, and although he would never, ever hurt her, there are many of his kind that would. As long as he was in her life, she was at risk.

And she has proven time and time again that she is special, a rare entity, someone worth fighting for, dying for, killing for.

Someone worth losing everything for.

And now, thank God, her fire burns brighter than ever. She does not have to remember all the people she lost. When he knew her as the girl who was indisputably Katherine's doppelganger, worry was the only constant in her life. She never laughed, never smiled. She even considered sacrificing herself (God forbid), and no matter how hard he tried, he could not make her happy.

She is happy now, though, happy and bubbly and vivacious. Her life is normal, predictable, just like he always suspected she secretly wanted. She might have loved Stefan – and then him, always him – but she never wanted the Salvatores, and everything they brought with them, to come into her life. Because now she has human friends and human needs, and altogether, it's a perfectly human existence.

And she's happy.

It's what he wants for her. He would have given _anything_ to become human for her, to give her a love that was safe from all the danger, to make her laugh the way she laughs now, to hold her tight and kiss her every day when he comes home from work. And subjecting her to a condemned eternity like his would not have solved any of their problems either.

The only other option (the only other way to make her happy) was to make her forget the existence of vampires – the existence of him – at all.

He questions his decision every day, of course. Every time she fingers the necklace she still wears (still filled with vervain, still a keepsake she can't bear to let go of), his grimace intensifies. Every time she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, grazing the twin scars by her temple, he feels inexplicably cold. And every time her pen stutters across the blank pages of the diary she doesn't remember getting, as if she no longer has the words that once came so easily, grief settles in his heart, and he has to leave her.

Because he still loves her, and her quick flashes of memory are at once too much and yet not enough. He loves her so much that it is killing him to watch her move on, killing him to see her struggle every day past the memories. He loves her, wholly, blindly, painfully. She is the greatest person he has ever known. She is the love of his life – the love of his existence.

And it's not enough.

He will never stop loving her, and it will never be enough. She will never know. He is nothing to her.

And he wonders sometimes if what he did was wrong. He essentially took away her free will. She had no choice in whether she dealt with the pain of losing nearly everyone she cared about. She had no _choice_. Was that cruel? Did he make a mistake? The question constantly burns in his mind.

Because it was the most selfless thing he's ever done, but somehow, it still feels selfish.

But then he remembers.

He once asked a witch how he was able to rob his love of years' worth of memories, memories she still has not regained (he is torn between hoping that one day she remembers him, and begging that she lives in blissful ignorance forever). The witch looked at him very calmly, and very sadly. And then, she told him that he wielded that magnificent amount of power over his one true love because he did it out of the purest love possible, the love that transcends human life.

The love that truly encompasses what Doug Horton must have meant:

_If you love something, let it go_.

So he lets her go.

_fin

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**Please tell me what you think :)**

**I kind of like the idea of letting you guys imagine for yourself why Damon compelled all of Elena's memories away, but I sort of already wrote a companion piece that explains what specific event triggered this drastic decision…let me know if you'd be interested in reading it!**


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